A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,20

he saw, if only to show him that she could pull this off. She didn’t care what he thought about her, but she did want him to be confident that she could carry off her side of the bargain before they signed the paperwork linking them together. ‘What do you think? Will it do for the party?’

It seemed to take an eternity for him to answer, an eternity that had her wondering if he was regretting this deal because she would never be up to the task. ‘Sí,’ he said dispassionately at last, ‘it will do. And now you will have to excuse me for an hour or so. I have a meeting that will not wait. The señoritas have instructions to find you a range of outfits for day and evening and I will leave you in their clearly capable hands.’ And with that he was gone.

She clamped down on a bubble of disappointment as she returned to the changing room, the women eagerly rushing around to gather up more garments for her to try on. Alesander approved of the dress. That should be enough. That was enough. There was no reason to be disappointed with his reaction.

On the other hand, there was plenty of justification for the resentment that simmered and bubbled away inside her.

Because she’d come here looking for a dress and she’d found one and now he calmly instructed her to find a ‘range of outfits’. Clearly he didn’t think her existing wardrobe lived up to the necessary Esquivel standards in order to convince the world they were an item. And yes, she understood that the world he inhabited was located somewhere high in the dizzy stratosphere compared to her own, but it still rankled to be so constantly reminded of that fact. It rankled even more to be given instructions without discussion, as if her opinion was not worth either hearing or seeking. After all, they were supposed to be in this together.

‘You will be very happy with that gown,’ Alondra said.

‘Your boyfriend thinks you look very sexy,’ said the other.

He still wasn’t her boyfriend and she very much doubted he thought about how she looked other than to gauge whether she would pass muster and be accepted in his company. ‘Well, he sure didn’t say much.’

‘Didn’t you see his eyes?’ The women looked at each other with a smile. ‘His eyes, they said plenty. He thought you were hot.’

Shop girl talk, she figured as she slipped out of the dress, the same the world over and designed to make you feel good about whatever you were trying on. If they saw anything in his eyes, it was most likely the greedy prospect of getting his hands on the rest of Felipe’s vines.

Besides, he didn’t think her hot. She wasn’t his type and that was fine. That was good. It made it so much easier to deal with him, knowing he wasn’t in the least bit interested in her.

She only wished she could be as impartial to him. Maybe then she wouldn’t spend so much time thinking how good he’d looked dressed only in a towel. And God, how he had. And then there was his evocative scent and the curl of his long tapered fingers around the steering wheel and the way her skin had sizzled when they touched …

No, thank God he wasn’t interested in her because it made the whole no-sex deal workable. Knowing the terms of their contract would stipulate that condition was comforting. But knowing she could rely on him not to try anything was the clincher.

At least one of them would be thinking straight.

His meeting had been interminable as plans were made for the upcoming harvest, and he wondered at the sense of leaving her for so long with a blank credit card. But she wasn’t still shopping. Instead, he found the three women sitting at a table outside the nearby restaurant, eating pintxos and sipping on Mojitos. ‘I do hope,’ he said, joining them and only half joking, ‘this doesn’t mean Simone has bought everything in the shop.’

She coloured and gave a guilty smile, as if she’d been caught in the act, and he smiled too, not just because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman blush, but because somehow she looked different. She’d changed her top—out of whatever nondescript rag she’d been wearing before, for a flirty silk blouse patterned in orange and teal that he liked—but he was sure there was something else.

‘It’s